Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Albanian live captions and productivity tool for doctor appointments

For deaf and hard of hearing people.

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Captio AI app showing live captions

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Use Cases

Every situation covered

Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.

🩺GP and primary care visits

At a qendër shëndetësore (health centre) in Tirana, Shkodër, or a smaller town, your mjek (doctor) explains symptoms and treatment in Albanian. Captio AI captions every word so you follow the full consultation.

🔬Specialist consultations

At a specialist appointment at a spital universitar (university hospital), medical terms arrive in Albanian mixed with Latinate vocabulary. Captio AI captions both in real time.

💊Pharmacy conversations

At the farmaci (pharmacy), the pharmacist explains dosage and interactions quickly in Albanian. Point your phone toward them and read the instructions as they speak.

🦷Dental appointments

At the dentist's surgery, instructions arrive during treatment when lip-reading is impossible. Captio AI captions from audio alone so you follow every direction.

🧠Mental health sessions

In a session with a psikolog or psikiatër, sensitive conversations require full comprehension. Captio AI captions the entire consultation so you engage without missing context.

🚑Emergency and urgent care

At the urgjencë (emergency department), staff speak quickly under pressure. Open Captio AI and read their instructions in real time.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Albanian
92.3%

word accuracy

independent benchmark, 2025

< 200ms
you speak
captions

real-time captions

first word appears as you speak

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Captio AI in everyday use
Why Captio AI

Built for the conversations where every word matters

Captions as the doctor speaks

Words appear on screen while the doctor is still talking. You read the diagnosis, drug name, or follow-up instruction at the same moment it is said — not after they have moved on.

Medical terminology handled accurately

Drug names, procedure names, clinical terms. Captio AI handles the vocabulary of a real consultation — not just everyday speech.

Review the appointment after

Record the consultation and upload it to Audio Transcription. Get a full written record of everything said — instructions, dosages, referrals — to review at home and share with a carer if needed.

Works in any clinical setting

Consultation rooms, hospital wards, A&E, dental chairs, pharmacy counters. Place the phone near the speaker and Captio AI captions whoever is talking.

Any language

For foreign-language doctors, specialists abroad, or appointments through an interpreter. Live Translator captions and translates in real time so you follow your diagnosis in the language you understand best.

100% private

Medical conversations are among the most sensitive there are. Captio AI processes audio in real time and discards it immediately. Nothing is recorded, stored, or shared.

Albanian

Why Albanian is hard to understand

Gheg–Tosk dialect split

  • Gheg and Tosk Albanian produce different mouth shapes for the same words
  • Albanian divides into two major dialect groups along the Shkumbin river: Gheg in the north (including Tirana, Shkodër, Kosovo) and Tosk in the south. Standard Albanian is based on Tosk, but Gheg is spoken by the majority of Albanians in Albania and all Albanians in Kosovo and North Macedonia. In clinical settings in Tirana, a Gheg-speaking patient may face a Tosk-educated doctor whose pronunciation of shared vocabulary produces different lip shapes from what the patient recognises.

Nasal vowels in Gheg

  • Gheg Albanian's nasal vowels are invisible on the lips
  • Gheg Albanian preserves long and nasal vowels that Tosk does not have. These nasal vowel qualities are produced in the nasal cavity — producing no visible lip difference from their non-nasal counterparts. A deaf patient lip-reading Gheg Albanian misses an entire phonological layer that distinguishes words, particularly in the northern cities and Kosovo where Gheg is the dominant clinical language.

Schwa instability

  • The Albanian schwa drops in Gheg fast speech
  • The Albanian central vowel ë (schwa) is prominent in Standard Albanian but tends to be dropped in Gheg speech and in fast casual Albanian across both dialects. In medical vocabulary, this elision shortens words unpredictably — a word that a deaf patient expects to see three syllables long on the lips arrives as two. The gap between the expected and actual lip movement sequence is a consistent source of comprehension error.

Consonant cluster density

  • Albanian has dense consonant clusters at word boundaries
  • Albanian tolerates sequences of consonants at word boundaries that are unusual in European languages, including medical vocabulary dense with Greek and Latin roots. In fast clinical speech these clusters merge across word boundaries, producing long sequences of consonant closures with no intervening vowel to anchor the segmentation. A deaf patient parsing Albanian consonant clusters at clinical speed must guess boundaries from context.

Interpreter scarcity

  • Very few sign language interpreters are available in Albanian healthcare
  • Albania has developed its own sign language (AlbSL) which is a relatively young standardised variety. The number of qualified AlbSL interpreters available for medical appointments is very small — particularly outside Tirana — meaning most deaf Albanians attending clinical consultations do so without professional communication support. A patient navigating a healthcare appointment without an interpreter must rely entirely on lip-reading in a phonologically challenging language.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss in Albania: unemployment three times higher, recognition still pending

Research conducted in 2015 — the most comprehensive survey of the deaf community in Albania — found that the unemployment rate of deaf Albanian adults was three times higher than among the hearing population. The survey, commissioned by Albania's Ministry of Social Welfare and Youth in collaboration with the Albanian National Association of the Deaf (ANAD) and the Finnish Association of the Deaf, documented major barriers to human interaction, information access, education, and employment for deaf Albanians. Albania ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in February 2013, committing formally to equal access across healthcare, education, and public life.

Despite CRPD ratification, Albanian Sign Language (AlbSL) has not yet received official legal recognition. The Ministry launched a Sign Language Recognition Working Group in March 2014 — a procedural step toward recognition — but formal legal status has not followed. Without legal recognition, there is no structural mandate for interpreter provision in healthcare, education, or employment contexts. The deaf community in Albania navigates daily life without the institutional scaffolding that legal recognition would provide: no guaranteed interpreters at medical appointments, no right to sign language instruction, and no formal complaint mechanism when communication access is denied.

In clinical settings, these gaps converge at the worst possible moment. An Albanian deaf patient attending a qendër shëndetësore without an interpreter, with limited lip-reading accuracy in a challenging phonological environment, and without backup written communication, receives at best a partial account of their diagnosis and treatment. For chronic conditions requiring regular appointments and medication management, the cumulative effect of incomplete clinical communication represents a significant health risk. Captio AI captions Albanian in real time at any health centre or hospital, giving deaf Albanians direct access to their doctor's words without depending on a system that has not yet provided the legal infrastructure to guarantee it.

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Privacy

What you hear stays with you.

Gone the moment it ends

Captio AI processes your audio in real time and discards it immediately. Nothing is recorded. Nothing is kept.

Not a product

Your conversations are not something Captio AI sells, shares, or monetizes — to anyone, for any reason.

Not used to train anything

What you say in a doctor's appointment or a job interview never ends up in a training dataset. Not ours. Not anyone else's.

100% PRIVATE

Private by default

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Reviews

People love Captio AI

"My internist speaks Standard Tosk Albanian but my family speaks Gheg — completely different mouth shapes for the same words. Captio AI captions the audio as-is and I read exactly what the doctor said, not what I guessed."

Arta Krasniqi 🇦🇱
arta.k***@gmail.com
Profound deafness since birth, Tirana

"In Shkodër, Gheg Albanian is everywhere. The nasal vowels and dropped schwas make lip-reading almost useless. Captio AI captures the audio and I follow every medical instruction clearly."

Arben Hoxha 🇦🇱
arben.h***@gmail.com
Severe bilateral hearing loss, Shkodër

"No interpreter was available at the spital. The pharmacist explained five drugs in fast Albanian and I caught maybe one or two words. Captio AI captions every word as the pharmacist speaks — I know exactly what I'm taking."

Elona Gjoshi 🇦🇱
elona.g***@gmail.com
Moderate hearing loss, Durrës

"Kosovo Albanian healthcare — Gheg throughout, fast speech, no sign language interpreters. Captio AI captions Gheg Albanian perfectly. My specialist appointment in Pristina was the first where I understood every detail of my treatment."

Blerim Shala 🇽🇰
blerim.sh***@gmail.com
Age-related hearing loss, Pristina, Kosovo

"My internist speaks Standard Tosk Albanian but my family speaks Gheg — completely different mouth shapes for the same words. Captio AI captions the audio as-is and I read exactly what the doctor said, not what I guessed."

Arta Krasniqi 🇦🇱
arta.k***@gmail.com
Profound deafness since birth, Tirana

"In Shkodër, Gheg Albanian is everywhere. The nasal vowels and dropped schwas make lip-reading almost useless. Captio AI captures the audio and I follow every medical instruction clearly."

Arben Hoxha 🇦🇱
arben.h***@gmail.com
Severe bilateral hearing loss, Shkodër

"No interpreter was available at the spital. The pharmacist explained five drugs in fast Albanian and I caught maybe one or two words. Captio AI captions every word as the pharmacist speaks — I know exactly what I'm taking."

Elona Gjoshi 🇦🇱
elona.g***@gmail.com
Moderate hearing loss, Durrës

"Kosovo Albanian healthcare — Gheg throughout, fast speech, no sign language interpreters. Captio AI captions Gheg Albanian perfectly. My specialist appointment in Pristina was the first where I understood every detail of my treatment."

Blerim Shala 🇽🇰
blerim.sh***@gmail.com
Age-related hearing loss, Pristina, Kosovo

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Understand your diagnosis in Albanian.

Captio AI is free to start

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